Exactly. Widespread surveillance is made to have something to use against potential threats (to national security? Nope, the nation is what is being spied. To the status quo? that's more likely and always happened in the past).But most of the targets are not harmful. It's just nice to be able to blackmail or convict everyone if the need arises.

Yet we give away our personal information all the time, implicitly trusting online companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Not sure how I should feel about the Government keeping tabs on those already keeping tabs on me.

I'm glad the NSA has an excuse to collect data on everyone. It's almost certainly harmless to Average Joe, so it is okay, apparently.

Nevermind the fact that this "potential stuff" of the NSA using blackmailing tactics has actually been employed to attack individuals, even without an otherwise just cause. Or the fact that it's illegal for them to even do this to begin with. Or even the fact that the NSA is showing no disregard for anyone's right to privacy. It's likely not going to be used against you personally, so we might as well not even bother thinking about it.

I'm glad the NSA has an excuse to collect data on everyone. It's almost certainly harmless to Average Joe, so it is okay, apparently.

I never said it's okay. I'm just saying it's really really low on my priorities list and certainly not worth a scare. At most, I can keep it on the back of my head, as in "it's there" and nothing else.

Maybe other people have lots of free time and can spend resources on this whole thing, but me, my family and all my friends have more important things to to, like minding our plain, boring, not really entertaining lives.

I'm glad the NSA has an excuse to collect data on everyone. It's almost certainly harmless to Average Joe, so it is okay, apparently.

I never said it's okay. I'm just saying it's really really low on my priorities list and certainly not worth a scare. At most, I can keep it on the back of my head, as in "it's there" and nothing else.

Maybe other people have lots of free time and can spend resources on this whole thing, but me, my family and all my friends have more important things to to, like minding our plain, boring, not really entertaining lives.

You don't deserve democracy. You ought to live in Iran or Saudi Arabia to see how much a real democracy is worth. Then you'd care. Because it's because of you that one day, overstepping its bounds once more, the government of america will be a totalitarian regime. And you will still not care.

Remember the old story:

First they came for the jews. I was not jew so I shut up.Then they came for the muslims. I was not muslims so I shut up.Then they came for the XXX. I was not a XXX so I shut up.Then they came for me, and nobody said anything....

You deserve to be deported. You and your busy life living you BBQs, plain with beer, sausages, pork ribs and Coke. Live a happy life. Until they come for you. But by then, don't expect anyone to stand up for you. Not me, nobody here, noone.

Why would I jump into an airplane, change planes at Frankfurt or Heathrow, fly all over the ocean, go to Washington and likely spend two yearly salaries to protest against a thing that flies low on my priority list?

Same for NSA; they *can* blackmail you, but the chance of them doing this to YOU, specifically, are very, very, very slim.

And yet, anyone who has a second thought about going into politics because of this potential, however slight, has had their First Amendment rights infringed. Ditto for people who have ignored friend requests due to the potential for guilt-by-association. (Now that we know they're going as deep as three hops, not only do you and your friends have to be politically reliable, you have to

I wouldn't say it is so much a factor of they might be doing this, but that they have already done it to people. I probably have a small file with several government agencies mostly because of the work I do (lots to do with airports and airlines, have gone through multiple DHS backgrounds checks), so for me I am not that concerned, but for your average person this is not right at all.

It is the fact that they are warrantlessly doing this to other individuals in a blanket attempt to find anything they think

Of course people have the right to be pissed off, it's, as I was saying, a matter of priorities. If one thinks it's high on their priority list, by all means, I won't try to stop them from doing whatever they think is right, but on the same note I won't join them in their march, simply because this is less important to me than other things. Who knows, maybe I'm a "healthy food" activist instead:)

Personally I had enough experience with federal databases and tracking individuals. I'm in the US on a J-1 visa, my wife is a J-2 dependent. Now we had to have our drivers license renewed every year as my contracts were one-year each time and they did not want to give me a DL valid longer than my lawful status in the US.

Renewing included checking with DHS if we are lawfully present - if my contract is valid. For me it was always OK right away. For my wife, it was 2-3 weeks before DHS gave the nod, the automated system never cleared her right away even though her visa was sponsored by the exact same program ( since she is a "dependent"). Why? We'll never know.

The day they will link the NSA dabases up with DMVs, FBI, DHS,..., now that will be a nice clusterfuck.

For my wife, it was 2-3 weeks before DHS gave the nod, the automated system never cleared her right away even though her visa was sponsored by the exact same program ( since she is a "dependent"). Why? We'll never know.

Well, they're suspicious enough of people marrying actual Americans and moving into their country, so it's maybe not that surprising that they're even more careful with the dependants of foreign workers?

So would Facebook, which also contains heaps of interesting information about individuals.My point is that it's far easier and less risky for a hacker to go for your e-mail account, which likely is a portal to pretty much anything NSA already has. OK, maybe 80% of it, but it's more than enough for a malevolent individual.

Furthermore, the same rule applies: if you're a boring individual, then you're most likely safe from prying eyes.

if you're a boring individual, then you're most likely safe from prying eyes.

That's the sticky wicket for Mahmoud the boring young Arab immigrant peacefully and coincidentally going to the same mosque as Mahmood the not-so-boring, not-so-peaceful, young Arab immigrant who want to blow something up in a crowd of babies.

He'd best pray that the FBI agents who pick him up the day after the Day Care Bombing don't have their collective heads up their asses when he tries to prove that he's innocent and boring.

Turning it back to someone that WASPs can relate to: I'd better hope that my fath

Take driving. Driving well means looking for potential trouble every instant. And your life and your passengers' and other people's depend on those trouble. Driving well, according to you, leads to mental illness?No because you don't OBSESS about it. You take precautions (seatbelt, speed) and live on.

If you are always SCARED of dangers while driving AND driving at the same time, it WILL turn you mad.Somehow you managed to confuse "being aware of" with "being scared of". Not the same thing, not by far.

Sure, the NSA is probably not going to come after you. However, once these databases are out there, there will be pressure to increase the return on investment by using them more and more. Shouldn't we be using them to look for kiddie porn? Maybe all of the local PD's should have access so they could try to prevent another Boston Bombing.

Once this thing is available to large numbers of people, it WILL be used for something it's not supposed to be used for.

Being scared of potential stuff ultimately leads to mental illness.
Every man you pass by *can* attack and hurt you, but none do, because they have no reason.
Every policeman you see *can* shoot and kill you, but none do, as they have no reason to do so.

Same for NSA; they *can* blackmail you, but the chance of them doing this to YOU, specifically, are very, very, very slim.

Just because it probably won't happen to me doesn't mean I should not be concerned about NSA spying. The spying creates a chilling effect on political dissidents and activists, some of whom fight for causes I believe in. A lot of those people have been targeted. So I am affected indirectly when this type of stuff goes on. Then there's the principle that we value freedom of speech and expression in this country. I want to see that upheld, not chipped away by some secret agency.

Based on no data but my gut feeling, I would venture to say it is more likely for an Average Joe to be shot by a random dude than to be targeted by the NSA. I say that based on the fact that there's more people carrying guns in the USA than NSA agents carrying papers to serve other people.

I agree with you to some extent. But in my case, I have a limited amount of concern to go around and it's running up already.As I was saying in my other posts, it's a matter of personal priorities. I respect someone else's just as much as I'd like them to respect mine:)This thing... is not MY priority, that's pretty much the gist of it.

Who said it required action by the NSA? Maybe all this info will leak out some day. They couldn't keep Snowden from leaking info, so if some admin is offered, say, a life as Kim Jong-Un's BFF in North Korea in return for embarrassing the NSA to death with a petabyte of leaked database, what will stop that?

You think 80% of the stuff the NSA has could be found in publicly available Facebook info? I don't see any way it could be more than 1%, even if you're an avid Facebook user. They don't present your credit card info and shopping transactions, email, VoIP calls, surfing records...all that other stuff that leaves your modem and comes back in. Which the NSA is capturing.

Ask yourself - when the US Constitution was written, did anybody really suspect that George Washington or anyone else at the Constitutional Convention was hoping to turn the country into his private playground, confiscate private property for personal profit, throw people into prison for fun, and invade privacy for the purposes of blackmail? I doubt it. They wrote the Bill of Rights not to protect the country from each other, but from possible errors by future leaders. That's exactly the same logic thos

Neither. I act the same as I always did. Looking back, I've had my fair share of unruliness but nothing really out of the ordinary. I've been a law-abiding citizen but contested local decisions quite vocally when they were matching my life priority list.

For most of us, it's neither, but imagine you're in a position to regulate banking or industrial activities in the U.S, or if you're an investigative journalist, then you better be prepared to have every activity monitored and, for god's sake, don't pay for prostitutes with a bank card like Elliot Spitzer.

I for one would LOVE to see those types of shady activities exposed, mainly when they're related to people with high public profile.I am convinced that one who keeps "high morality", stays away from shady businesses and generally doesn't do anything overly stupid can as well run for presidency with no issues whatsoever.

I don't think our equivalent of the IRS cares about what I do. They do some mining with my data, just like your NSA, and then throw it to into the bin.

...ordering it by the likelihood you're a terrorist...

I also doubt that part. If they mine the data at all (oposed to just looking after the fact), it's not terrorists that they are looking for. It would be a very stupid way for searching for terrorists, and the NSA isn't known for doing stupid things.

You know those privileged extended families where some of the kids go into cushy government/corporate positions while the other kids become rebels because they hate what the other half of their family are doing? Well, in my youth, I was in the latter sort.

And it was pretty much a given that1) people did take an interest in what I was doing, but more for people I associated with than who I actually was myself (i.e. fairly irrelevant); and2) it was unlikely that I would come to any harm, because I knew the ri

It's not so much that they're after you. It's just that they regard you (and everyone else) as potential criminals. The data they collect is simply the "evidence" they will be able to deploy once they decide that the "potential" has crossed some mythical line and you (or I) should now be brought to book.

In the health services the philosophy is "there's no such thing as a healthy person - just one who's maladies haven't been diagnosed yet". So it is with citizenship. Everyone has broken the law - maybe kno

They're not after me personally, but the NSAs and GCHQs around the world changes how everything works.

With such detailed information about everyone, they can silently make indirect key changes that tips the world in whateverdirection they so desire. Politicians they dislikes are given a steeper hill to climb, as things tends to work against them.

I think the US or UK or any countries that has such secret, uncontrollable, and powerful adversary working againstits own population from within disqualifies it as

Let's make a poll. Those silly guys keep talking about how the government is spying on all of us. Those silly tinfoil hatters!

Oh, my. There is a cabinet in a major data interconnect area siphoning off all data. Probably nothing. Imagine what those silly tinfoil hatters are gonna say about it! Ha ha. Let's make a poll.

Oh my. There are some leaks showing potentially massive surveillance of everyone, but probably nothing. This is gonna suck. Those silly tinfoil hatters are gonna have a heyday with this.

Oh my. The executive branch has been conclusively shown to be wholesale spying on everyone, and lying to the legislative branch about it, and the legislative and judicial branches have been proven to be at the best lax in their duties to reign in the executive branch.

Due to the nature of my job, I spend most of my time abroad and frequently communicate with "suspect" countries. I also engage in international communications involving the US on a regular basis. Given that Obama blows unidentified people up for a "pattern of behaviors" in so-called signature strikes, I say go ahead and laugh at my tinfoil hat. I will never know how my years of paranoia--using proxies, encryption, etc., on a regular basis--have influenced what data the NSA have been able to pin to whatever unique hash represents me in their secret databases, but I hesitate to call it paranoia now... more like prescience.

I will never know how my years of paranoia--using proxies, encryption, etc., on a regular basis--have influenced what data the NSA have been able to pin to whatever unique hash represents me in their secret databases, but I hesitate to call it paranoia now... more like prescience.

What you have done is illuminate yourself with a spot light. Good job.

but, they are watching everyone and that includes a lot of people who's decisions affect me. If they are collecting information illegally, who's to say they won't use it illegally. For example to influence congressional oversight or even to tilt a campaign toward the congressman who is more likely to be pro-NSA.

On a less 'conspiracy theory' line of thought, the CEO of my global company may decide that the US isn't the best place to do business.

So, even though they don't care about me, their collection of my information can affect me in big ways since that collection is part of a big, poorly-targeted surveillance system.

I'm not worried they read my email or listen to my phone conversations. It's when they start to read the email and listen to the phone conversations of the members of the secret services oversight committee that my justified paranoia is in full bloom. You want to publically critizise broad unwarrented surveillance? Does the public know you're into fetish porn? Do you want them to?

I'm probably not identified as a likely terrorist, but I've said enough and written enough and protested enough publicly that I might have grabbed their attention. In addition, I know some people who met these clowns [usatoday.com] at a political protest, and since they've said they're looking at 3 degrees of separation, I fall under that umbrella.

I doubt they spent more than a few minutes on me, but I have every reason to believe they looked into my activities.

They already have my fingerprints and likely have a nice metadata repository. It doesn't help that I'm a free-thinker and believe the entire government structure in this country is corrupt. I think that's a majority view nowadays anyhow though.

A few years back I showed up at the airport without my ID (i'd taken it out to show ID at a bar, yadda, yadda) . Assuming I wouldn't be able to fly, I went to ask the TSA agent to be sure, and to my surprise, they said, go over to this desk over here and we'll ask you a few questions.

The agent asked for my name and SSN, then in a matter of seconds called up a list of questions such as: The first car I ever registered, What my address was in 1992, when the last time I traveled internationally... I couldn't answer one of the questions and they simply added in a few more. This was probably 2008 and front line TSA agent had access to a voluminous profile on me. I can imagine an FBI agent would have access to a lot more and now with the BIG Data projects the NSA is - they probably could paint an accurate picture of my finances, travel habits and web/communications trends.

So yes, I was able to fly - but I left with my head spinning about how well I was profiled even then.

That really is a lot different to surveillance. All the data you mentioned is really just everything you have submitted to the government about yourself through various agencies and then compiled for ease of access, organizing what you have given them is significantly different from them going out and monitoring and/or discovering information about you.

Exactly - and a lot of the data is public and just waiting to be aggregated. Lexis Nexis has a service like this. As does Verizon. As does Experian. We give up a lot of data for services, and when it is consolidated it can be surprising what is known. Some of my favorite questions from those types of things are 'in what county does your younger sister live' or 'what hospital was your oldest child born in'.

The very point of what has been revealed is that none of this is true, and the truth is much worse.

They don't watch you or keep a file on you. And they care and don't care at the same time. Basically, you don't exist except as a metadata field until someone mentions your name and asks for your data. Only then, because they are vacuuming up everything can they run a big search and create that huge file on you on demand. And not just on you, on everyone.

William Gibson was right. If he had written stories about what is reality today, 20 years ago we would've laughed about how over-the-edge paranoid he is.

Most immigrants should be ticking "they have a detailed file about me", of course they are freely given the majority of the information by the applicant while they go through the various visa/greencard/naturalization processes so perhaps it isn't quite the same.

Snowden gave money to the Ron Paul campaign. Political contributions by average citizens (who don't have SuperPACs) are public knowledge. I can bet that if I, who also gave money to the Paul campaign and the EFF, decided to apply for a job with the NSA these two facts of public knowledge would prompt a search of all they'd collected about me or with the dragnet. I rather doubt I'd get the job.

I don't think they care about me, but they are not using the heavy hand yet. I think they are still targeting what the believe to be genuine threats to public safety. If the government paranoia reaches the point that they start viewing political challenges as threast then we are all in trouble.

What they will do when the next wave of McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism [wikipedia.org] arrives really scares me. They probably still won't care about me, but I might fall into a target demographic. Major damage

...but really, any of the first three can realistically be a fact. Theoretically, "they could care less about me" could be true based on their statements that once they find out who you are (and no doubt they have years of data definitely pointing right at me). On the other hand, who knows what will happen in the future, if they start deciding to secretly go after people, whose data can lead to every single American being accused of "illegal" activities?

Whatever concerns anyone might have about the NSA, however you think they could have possibly spied on you (whether they bothered or not) your lack of security means there are a thousand other parties just like them, to whom you're just as vulnerable.

Encrypt.

If you're worried about the NSA, and I'm not even saying that's dumb, then also worry about the Chinese, the Russians, the kid next door, and Nigerian spammers. Your plaintext is as equally visible to anyone who wants to read it. OTOH if you have your

It can hurt the competitiveness of companies making it seem like big companies just get lucky all the timeIt can hurt the democratic process making it seem like new parties and ideas just cant seem to get off the ground.It can hurt the system of justice making it seem like all the "big guys" get away with it all the time.It can hurt the economic system making it seem like the "insiders" never miss an opportunity for easy money.

Its not busting down the door that worries me (much). Its the slow decline and malaise that comes with bad people using this tool to stay in control and win without having to try.

For real. I helped set up a boycott of Koch industries a couple of years ago. They busted down my door once already, stole all of my things, and persistently attack me, threaten me, and have US attorney's after me. I live in constant fear that my communications are not private and that they are waiting for me to fuck up in order to fuck me up. It wears on my nerves.

Can you give us any references for any of this? Even the non-scary parts, like just what protest was it? Where? Was it written up in the news? Especially interesting would be if you have references for the scary shit, though I understand how it's probably all tied up in secret courts with secret laws.

the IRS. Unlike the NSA, which probably does have substantial data on me but probably will never use it, the IRS will hound you with whatever they have on you. At least the NSA only has data about me that they've been able to find. I am required to submit information to the IRS telling them all about my private financial life.

It's also worth noting that we don't really know if the NSA is actually abusing the information they have. We do know the IRS has been abusing people for their political views. I'm much more worried about the IRS than the NSA.

Wow. I can guarantee you that posts like that will get you on a watch list. The IRS did nothing politically motivated. Issa has been made a fool of with his ginned up "scandal" that wasn't. I can point at testimony and documents released as proof, that Issa subpoenaed mind you. What you got? Fox News and GOP talking points?